{"name":"Chroma","tagline":"Open-source search infrastructure for AI — local library plus usage-priced Cloud.","url":"https://www.trychroma.com","category":"data","pricing":"freemium","price_note":"OSS self-host free; Cloud Starter $0 + usage ($5 credits); Team $250/mo + usage ($100 credits, no rollover); write $2.50/GiB, storage $0.33/GiB-mo","free_tier":true,"open_source":true,"api":true,"self_host":true,"verdict":"situational","verdict_text":"The Python-native vector store people actually start with. Local Chroma is free. Cloud Starter is $0 plus $2.50/GiB write after a small credit pile; Team is a $250 seat on the same meters. Not Pinecone (that's managed-only) and not a retrieval API (that's Voyage). Untested at production QPS here.","limitations":["Starter is usage-priced; large ingest bills write GiB, not \"free forever\".","Team's $100 included credits do not roll over.","Hitting customer or Chroma usage limits pauses the service until raised.","Local OSS and Cloud are not feature-identical (serverless search vs laptop DB)."],"strengths":["Python-native vector store with a free local start.","Open-source self-host option keeps data on your own hardware.","Clear Cloud usage meters ($2.50/GiB write, $0.33/GiB-mo storage)."],"use_for":["Starting vector search locally in a Python project.","Teams that need a self-hosted vector store for RAG.","Workloads where local OSS and managed Cloud are both viable."],"skip_when":["You need a fully managed service like Pinecone with no local ops.","Large ingest would bill write GiB faster than a flat plan.","Feature parity between local OSS and Cloud is required."],"receipts":["https://www.trychroma.com/pricing","https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma"],"affiliate":"none","evidence_tier":"source-verified","momentum":"blueshift","featured":false,"data_sensitivity":{"trains_on_inputs":"unknown","local_processing":true},"last_verified":"2026-08-19","observed_by":"whysanesanders","slug":"chroma","canonical_url":"https://noemium.com/tools/chroma/","attribution":"Noemium catalog data is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). See https://noemium.com/method/ for how entries are verified."}